It's been over a year since I first read the first book, so it's about time I concluded my reviews of the Dark Crystal YA novels! Spoilers ahead.
Naia, Kylan and their friends now once more must unite to light the last few flames of resistance, all of which will finally lead to a direct confrontation with the Crystal Lords. However, there is one problem: how do you fight these creatures you cannot (morally) kill?
I've seen people have mixed thoughts on these novels, and I'm honestly kind of with them. I generally liked them, but compared to the writing and characters of the show I find them to be a bit lacking. I'm also kind of bummed with how they handled skekSa, one of the more morally gray Skeksis (as well as arguably the only female one).
This book still deals with skekSa the same way, making her a central villain. I guess I've come to accept her as this, but it's definitely not how I saw her when I first started reading these books. Maybe it has something to do with the fandom hyping up her character for me, but I was a bit disappointed.
That said, I do still really like our two main leads: Naia and Kylan. I like their personalities and flaws, I like their decisions and relationships to the other characters. They're nothing really that stands out, but they're pretty decent as our protagonists and I do have a genuine fondness for them.
Other than that, the plot of this book just felt a bit lackluster to me. We already had such a journey lighting flames in the last book, and now we get even more of that here. I didn't become genuinely interested in the story until the Skeksis showdown was about to happen, since that came with the interesting moral dilemma of "can we kill these beings if it means killing our friends too".
So I'm just going to say the novels were overall okay with some good parts in them. Same with this book. I don't hate them in the slightest, I just expected more than what I got.
Rating: 3.5/5
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